City Director of Economic Development and Strategic Partnerships Gregg Swanzey says he just wants to keep members of the Common Council updated on his effort to untangle apparent problems with seven grants that could, he says, put the city at...

The Kingston Local Development Corp. stands to turn a tidy profit on a former bank building in Midtown after a New York City developer made an offer on the vacant property that had been the proposed site of a police...

A well-known Midtown Kingston community activist is accused of recruiting gang members into a black radical group, selling illegal guns and advocating violence against police in a case with roots in the four-decades long hunt for an alleged cop-killer from...

In the wake of a bottling company’s self-aborted bid to construct a plant in the Town of Ulster and use millions gallons from Kingston’s water supply, city lawmakers say they want to establish new rules to give elected officials more...

It didn’t take long for the KPD’s Sherlock Gnomes to bust a pair of Kingston teens who allegedly stole “numerous” lawn ornaments from city yards. According to the KPD, shortly after midnight on Monday, May 18, they received a report...

Kingston has made a comeback as a manufacturing town, albeit on an artisanal small-scale level, producing encaustic paints, pottery wheels and kilns, nut cheeses, cutting boards, quality cabinetry, branded T-shirts, stationery, high-end furniture and other items. Most of these businesses...

Kingston City School District officials said this week the $137.5 million Kingston High School Second Century Capital Plan will have to go five years deeper into the century in order to get the most out of the state aid funding...

Over the past three years, Mayor Shayne Gallo has often inveighed against “party elites” and other perceived political enemies he’s variously dubbed “the Politburo” or “the shadow government.” On Saturday, March 7, in a packed room at Tony’s Pizzeria on...

Kingston lawmakers have kicked off a discussion on how to curb the use of single-use plastic bags in the city. But, with lawmakers’ proposals ranging from an outright ban to an educational campaign on the bags’ environmental toll, city residents...

It’s an unseasonably warm fall Friday in Uptown Kingston and Doug Wygal is about to eat Rick Lange’s lunch. And older gentleman and his wife parked across the street from Wygal’s Rocket Number Nine Records. They’re looking for Lange’s Rhino...

Hudson Valley Weather and Mid-Hudson Valley Weather, the region’s two leading do-it-yourself purveyors of forecasts, have merged. Alex Marra, the man behind Hudson Valley Weather, announced this summer that the laid-back-dude voice of Mid-Hudson Valley Weather, Bill Potter of Pine...

Slaves in the early Dutch colonial era (circa 1625-1664) were treated rather better than those under English captivity, according to Ulster County historian Anne Gordon. Though quite restricted, they were allowed to marry, congregate, attend religious services with whites, and...

Accurate descriptions of Kingston’s original stockade, built between 1658 and 1677, have eluded historians for centuries. And no wonder. The definitive 1695 original “Miller map” of the area went to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean after its creator’s ship...

First in trickles, then in droves, the Dutch (obviously), Germans and Irish first, then the Italians, Poles and many others, came to Kingston. Different people from different places with different cultures and religions settled in ethnic enclaves with their own...

Kevin “K” Sampson has been walking the streets of Kingston since he was toddling. He never fails to offer a smile and a wave for anyone willing to receive it. Sampson is most often seen strolling the streets of Uptown,...

SUNY Ulster has named Alan Roberts of Indian River, Fla. as the college’s sixth president, effective July 27. Roberts’ appointment to a three-year contract was approved by SUNY leaders on Monday. Roberts, 52, succeeds Donald Katt, 68, who will retire on Aug. 15 after 47 years with the college. The new president will draw an...

It’s moving to hear a song like “Ride Out Any Storm” on activist Tom Chapin’s great new album, 70. Folk elements straight out of the bright light of protest music anchor these songs of determination. You certainly feel Chapin’s continuing vitality. I ask him whether protest can still weather the storm and make peace prevail...

“Do you have any idea what happened last night?” a befuddled Republican committeeman asked me the day after the county committee rejected one and possibly two candidates for Ulster County executive. I had some idea, of course. I was there last week for the carefully contrived finale where party chairman Roger Rascoe rejected nominations from...

The Kingston school board has decided against a project labor agreement (PLA) for the $137.5 million “Second Century” Kingston High School renovation plan. An engineer’s study for the district found that limiting construction bids to union contractors could add between $4.73 million and $11.18 million to the project cost. A little over a month after...

Will she or won’t she was the question circulating among the political class just prior to this week’s Ulster County Republican convention. But a funny thing happened on former legislature chairwoman Terry Bernardo‘s way to the Republican nomination. Robert’s Rules of order and Bernardo’s tactical stumbles left her reading her acceptance speech to a group...

Former legislature chairwoman Terry Bernardo of Rochester says she’ll run for county executive despite being denied the opportunity to have her name placed in nomination at the Republican Party’s annual convention in Kingston on Wednesday night. Bernardo was in the audience with an acceptance speech in hand when party Chairman Roger Rascoe announced that the...

Do not, my friends, become addicted to water. It will take hold of you, and you will resent its absence.’ — Immortan Joe Much has been made of the feminist themes running through the thoroughly fantastic movie Mad Max: Fury Road, and rightfully so: the major theme of the film was, in my editorial...

The potential health and safety risks posed by the proposed Pilgrim Pipeline, which would carry volatile Bakken crude oil from Albany to a refinery in New Jersey and a variety of petroleum products back the other way, were highlighted by a rally May 18 at the Ulster County Courthouse. County Executive Mike Hein, speaking at...

A Friday, May 29 undercover sting with cops posing as johns and using websites such as the infamous hooker-hookup site backpage.com resulted in four prostitution arrests – all of out-of-towners – and a man getting busted for pot, the Kingston Police Department and the Town of Ulster Police Department said. According to police, the KPD’s Special...

“I’m in a rather ambiguous position, an ex-rock musician who did a lot of drugs,” claimed legendary rock journalist, sci-fi author and U.K. scenester Mick Farren in one of his later-life interviews (on Vimeo) on the subject of his must-read book Speed-Speed-Speedfreak: A Fast History of Methamphetamine. Any fan of Sons of Anarchy‘s stark televised...

Shortly after 3 p.m. Thursday, May 28, the Kingston Police Department identified the officer who shot 18-year-old Alex Jeffries as Officer Steven Fellows, a decorated 22-year policeman and 14-year KPD veteran. Its release also stated that Fellows has been reassigned to “an administrative assignment” until the state police and Ulster County District Attorney’s Office finish...

The state police have identified the man shot by a Kingston Police officer late Wednesday night as 18-year-old Alex Jeffries of Kingston. According to troopers, who are running the investigation into the shooting at the request of the Kingston Police Department, KPD officers responding to a burglar alarm at the Chase bank at the Kingston...